


The Moments After

by Deepdarkwaters



Series: Moments [2]
Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-01 00:25:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15131030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters
Summary: Three love stories.1) It starts with a one night stand that never happened, which in Roxy's experience is a very unusual way for a relationship to begin.2) Hamish smiles and very quietly murmurs, "Well, hello," and Harry without even meaning to takes the last few steps toward him through the crowd and draws him into an embrace so ferocious that it makes Hamish gasp against his neck.3) From where the helicopter lets him down to the palace roof on a line, Eggsy could find his way to the Queen's bedroom with his eyes closed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> These might make some kind of sense as standalone getting-together fics, but will probably be better after reading the first part! (That one's mostly Eggsy/Harry and Eggsy/Tilde.)

It starts with a one night stand that never happened, which in Roxy's experience is a very unusual way for a relationship to begin.

There's a practicality about sleeping with people which she's taken a lot of care to hone over the last decade, the same way she's honed her fighting skills and languages: you pick up a stranger who's not looking for a round two, or you find a friend who's not going to feel weird about it in the morning, and you move on. But waking up _without_ the familiar pleasant feeling of post-coital lassitude in all her limbs that usually comes as a package deal with being surrounded by the scent of someone else's bedclothes is a new and weird feeling, one she's not entirely sure she likes.

She wonders for a moment whether it was just really rubbish unsatisfying sex, but a quick poke around inside her underwear says no. At least there's that.

So the spy work begins. She opens her eyes at last, squinting against the morning sun that still feels far too bright even when it's diffused by the drawn curtains. She knows this room, she must know it - this house was her home and her playground growing up and she could sketch the floor plans in her sleep - but converting all the various bedrooms and drawing rooms into suites for the agents and senior staff has pulled a mask over everything, and she can't quite get her bearings.

Definitely a man, she could tell that from the scent of his bedclothes even before opening her eyes. But who? The fuzz of a mild hangover is keeping her too groggy to remember last night in any great detail, but she makes herself focus and builds an imaginary police line-up in her head featuring all the people she'd been with at the pub. It's not Arthur, obviously, and it's not Galahad because the scent surrounding her isn't the Ambre Topkapi he trails around after himself like a bridal train. Not Eggsy, because once was plenty. Robert from Accounts? Maybe. Or maybe Ravi from R&D, who offered to buy her a drink after she beat him at--

Darts.

The scent of his pillows and the image of his face crash together suddenly, and she remembers: _it's Kay_. Remembers the open collar of his white shirt, and the distracting slide of his throat every time he took a swallow of his whisky. The impressed, delighted way he laughed and whistled at her first bullseye. The utterly ridiculous mass of his chest and biceps when she won and impulsively hugged him. And something gentler too: the hesitant way he offered his hand on the walk back to HQ, like he was fully aware she didn't need his help to step over the stile but just wanted her to know how pleased he was to be this close to her. The blue highlights and shadows of the moonlight on his face every time he glanced over and smiled at something she was saying. How the goodnight in the silent hallway lingered long enough to turn into an invitation to come and play video games, and how she trounced him at those as well.

Roxy sits up in bed, trying to finger-comb the worst of the tangles out of her loose hair, and from this position she can see him through the open bedroom doorway. He's sitting cross-legged on the couch in his pyjama trousers and vest - she realises she's still wearing her bra and t-shirt, though her jeans are in a heap on the carpet - and the movement makes him look up.

"Morning," he calls softly. It's a good word for him, _soft_ , one she never would have applied to him before but seems to fit him suddenly: there's a crooked little smile on his mouth and red marks on his cheek, the imprint of the scatter cushion he must have been using as a pillow all night. She's seen him in gym gear before - even sparred with him, given and received bruises, ended up under him or on top of him on the mats, both covered in each other's sweat - but there's something about _pyjamas_ that feels shockingly intimate even though he's a whole room away.

"Morning," Roxy replies. He averts his eyes politely when she pushes the covers back and leans over to retrieve her jeans and socks, only looking back up when he hears her footsteps coming closer. "Did you sleep on the settee?"

He shrugs, one-shouldered and casual, and leans over to the mini Budweiser fridge beside him to pass her an icy cold bottle of water. "No big deal. I would have taken you to your room but I didn't wanna wake you for the door code." The sweating cold bottle is too tempting not to press to her aching neck and forehead before she opens it to drink, and Kay's voice drops a note lower; he's probably perfectly capable of keeping that hunger hidden, but he's smart enough to read her and knows he really doesn't need to. "I took your jeans off so you'd be more comfortable but I didn't, you know, look."

"You could," Roxy says. Her voice sounds strange to herself, vaguely awkward like she's speaking a script she hasn't bothered to learn properly - because this is _new_ , this isn't the way it usually happens. If she'd stayed awake she thinks they probably would have ended up sharing that bed, and he would have stripped her out of her top and underwear as well as her jeans, and there'd be no early-morning confusion about whose bed she was in and whether they were going to do this because he'd be there right next to her already, waking up sprawled across three-quarters of the space with his mouth full of her mussed hair.

Kay cocks his head and one eyebrow, a faint smile gleaming in his eyes though it's not quite showing on his mouth. "Look?"

"Yes."

"You mean like right now?" he murmurs, hooking two fingertips into her belt loops to draw her closer until Roxy takes his wrists and guides his hand to her button and zip instead.

"Have you got better plans for your day off?"

A fervent _no, ma'am_ is the last thing he says before his hands are shoving her unfastened trousers down and his mouth finds itself occupied with pressing a line of hot kisses on the white stretch of skin above the front of her underwear.

*

Of course things can never be that simple, that's just asking far too much of a job this messy and ridiculous. Their glasses chirp the emergency code, they fling their clothes back on and race to the meeting room, all available agents are dispatched with full weaponry and half a plan to intercept an arms dealer they've been trailing for months who just let his guard down enough to be spotted in the country at last. Roxy's hangover has vanished, like it usually does within a few hours of waking up, which is helpful since it looks like she's the one in the best position to take the final shot and trying to do that with a pounding headache isn't the sort of workaholic pressure she enjoys. She breathes out slowly, gets her rifle in position, and shoots the mark so neatly through the window of his not-so-safehouse that he's dead on the floor long before the glass stops hailing down around him.

"Perfect," Merlin says in her earpiece, and yes, she thinks, she's really not bad at this job at all.

*

She taps the side of her shoe gently against Kay's ankle in the debrief meeting: four times, pause, four again, pause, two, pause, six, pause, and one, then does it twice more to make sure he understands. He doesn't make a sound or nod his head or anything, but there's a telltale clench in his jaw. He's got this.

Her shower is quick, soaping away the dried nervous sweat of the stakeout and the abseil escape down the side of the tower block, but she's still only halfway through drying her hair when she hears the beep of the access code being entered into her suite door. He must have raced through his own shower too: when he lets himself in and she goes through to meet him, she can see his hair is damp and his white t-shirt is sticking in transparent patches to skin he didn't bother to properly dry. She's only wearing a towel herself, easy to untuck and drop to the floor when Kay strides across the living room and kisses her without a word. He doesn't seem to realise at first, not until he slides his hand from her hair down the length of her back and finds nothing there but bare skin. He makes a glorious little noise then, ravenous and surprised, and Roxy grabs a handful of his t-shirt to haul him into the bedroom.

"Can I call you Roxy?" he asks, stumbling trying to toe off his trainers and get his sweatpants down at the same time, and she realises they've never actually used each other's real names before.

"If I can call you Christopher."

"Kit," he says, barely-coherently into her mouth, and Roxy nods as she's tearing his t-shirt off over his head and pulling him down on top of her. "Jesus, you're incredible..."

The words fade away, lost in a jumble of kisses down the line of her collarbone, down between her breasts and over the gentle curve of her stomach, and when she comes the first time it's with his tongue fierce between her legs and one thick finger twisting and thrusting inside her. The second is on his cock, pulsing and trembling against him with her fingertips rubbing hot little circles against her clit. And there's one more, unexpected and sweet enough to make her gasp: his huge clever hands on her hips guiding her to knee-walk up his spent body and settle there on his face again, her flesh finding every curve and angle of his nose and chin and mouth to rock against until she's shaking with the pleasure of it, tingling all up and down her limbs so that when she can finally slide back down to straddle his hips and haul him up for a messy kiss she can barely feel the way her fingers wrap around handfuls of his hair.

Kay - Kit - is the first one to speak at last into the hot silence of the room. "Feel like my mama's gonna reach right over the Atlantic Ocean and smack me upside the head for not even asking you on a date first."

Roxy jabs him gently with her elbow and he laughs, rolling onto his side to tuck his face against her sweating neck and kiss her there. "Please don't talk about your mother when your cock's still touching my leg." Another silence, comfortable and long, then very quietly she says, "I've never actually, you know, been on a date before. I'm more of a sort of one-night-stand, friends-with-benefits type."

Kit's fingers are sweeping long, gentle, deliciously tickling lines up and down her naked back. "Okay, sure. If that's what you want."

But maybe there's a first time for everything, even this.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What's wrong with here? Royal rose gardens not romantic enough for you?"
> 
> The freewheeling lurch in Harry's stomach at that knocks a breathless little laugh out of him. "I didn't take you for a romantic."
> 
> "I'm not, as a rule." Subtext soaks his words: _Everything's different with you_.

It's ridiculous to feel this shy around his oldest friend, but living on separate continents and going months at a time speaking only over WhatsApp before this unexpected reunion is giving Harry the oddest feeling that they're strangers now.

Then Hamish smiles and very quietly murmurs, "Well, hello," and Harry without even meaning to takes the last few steps toward him through the crowd and draws him into an embrace so ferocious that it makes Hamish gasp against his neck. The exhale morphs immediately to laughter, a low little chuckle that caresses Harry's ear as intimately as a kiss. "It's good to see you too, Harry."

"I didn't know you were coming." This is by far the longest deliberate touch they've shared, it's never been much more than handshakes and friendly shoulder-pats before. A quick squeezing hug here and there while drunk in their younger days, but not _this_ \- not Hamish's hands resting on Harry's hips and sliding around to clutch the back of his jacket, not Harry's fingers on the back of Hamish's neck and stroking gently just above his collar. "Did Eggsy--"

But whatever the answer to that is will only lead to a conversation that probably shouldn't be had in the middle of a royal ball so he stops, takes a step back, and _thrills_ at the reluctant way Hamish lets him go, palms and fingertips clinging to the fabric of his jacket for as long as he possibly can.

"Tilde invited me."

"Eggsy told me you'd grown close. I still haven't met her."

"You'll like her. Wicked sense of humour, and smart. I wish I could have her brain on my team. But..." Hamish goes quiet then shrugs, awkward for the first time. "We can't always get what we want."

"Sometimes we can," Harry says, reckless with adrenaline.

*

A walk in a rose garden can be just a walk in a rose garden, or it can be something nameless and electric and vaguely terrifying. This is very decidedly the latter.

The music from inside seems muted here. It feels as if they're farther away from the palace than they really are, though the old stone wall and the bright windows are almost close enough to reach out and touch. Harry thinks suddenly of his own house: the deceptive thinness of the walls, and the disapproving grimace from the sour old lady next door when they both went out to their back gardens to peg out some washing the afternoon after Eggsy taught him how to fuck.

Hamish, a little way ahead and framed like a painting in a rose-trellis archway between two gardens, is looking back at him. For a moment there's something dark and wanting in his eyes, an enormous crashing hunger that makes Harry's heart feel fluttery, before he composes himself and turns back around to pass though. He's wearing his kilt tonight and elaborate, decorative metal legs, like wrought iron gates curved into prostheses and strapped to the place below his knees. There must be weaponry hidden in there somewhere, Harry knows him far too well to assume otherwise, but whatever it is is camouflaged too well to guess.

There's a bench in this area, nestled in the deep shadows in the corner where the glow of the garden lanterns and the palace windows can't reach. Harry sits beside Hamish, reconsiders, stands up again, then resettles six inches closer so their shoulders are pressed together and Hamish's bare knees are within touching distance, though it seems a bit too forward to go in for a grab quite this soon.

"I wish we were at home," Harry says quietly.

He can feel Hamish's eyes on him more than he can see them. "Whose home?"

"Either."

"What's wrong with here? Royal rose gardens not romantic enough for you?"

The freewheeling lurch in Harry's stomach at that knocks a breathless little laugh out of him. "I didn't take you for a romantic."

"I'm not, as a rule." Subtext soaks his words: _Everything's different with you_.

"No, I can't say it's ever held much appeal for me either." _Everything's different with you_. "Until, you know."

"Until Eggsy?" Merlin asks, lightly teasing, and Harry tips his head back and groans at the starry sky.

"Did he tell you?"

"Please don't think that just because I'm no longer with Kingsman that means I'm not still a fully fledged member of the gossip circle. Arthur dropped some very strong hints. I worked out the rest from the length of Lancelot and Merlin's silences when I asked."

"You're as bad as Arthur, and he's worse than me. Good lord."

Silence again, comfortable and easy, the way it always was between them.

After a while, Hamish says, "I'd kiss you if I could see your face. I don't want to end up with my tongue in your nose." Then Harry, usually so flawlessly graceful, almost trips over his own feet in his haste to stand up and yank Hamish across the garden to the patch of lamplight there, into an embrace so longed for and dreamed about that it feels like their five hundredth instead of their first.

*

"You could come back," Harry says.

Hamish winds his fingers with Harry's and pins both his hands above his head on the hotel pillows, the thrust of his hips slowing to a maddening, delicious grind that somehow makes his cock feel twice as big inside. "I think Amelia might have something to say about that."

"I could transfer to Statesman," he tries next, but that gets a long swipe of Hamish's tongue up the sweating line of his neck, and a bite he has to cover with concealer begged from a maid in the morning.

"Your ego and Champ's ego could never survive in the same place full time."

Exasperated, Harry says, "Well then you're going to have to get your act together and invent teleportation at last because I'm not taking a transatlantic flight every time I need your cock in me," and can't figure out if Hamish's grin is because he's about to come or because he's already invented it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You're late," she says at last, scratchy with sleep and yawning against his shoulder.
> 
> "Gimme a break, I'm fucking sixty-seven years old. Takes me a bit longer to navigate them stairs these days."

From where the helicopter lets him down to the palace roof on a line, Eggsy could find his way to the Queen's bedroom with his eyes closed. He goes silently down the attic steps, out of a secret doorway behind a tapestry, around a corner, past two guards who are used to him appearing in the middle of the night, and through her bedroom door. He's already undressing by then, unbuttoning his suit and prising off his shoes without unlacing them in a way that Harry still hasn't given up telling him off for, even at almost a hundred years old.

She's left her lamp on, dimmed low, but his farewell dinner dragged on because everybody in the world wanted to say goodbye and good luck and she's fallen asleep waiting for him. He's older now than he ever thought he would be, a little bit clumsier, aching in most of his joints and a thousand old wounds, but he's not so far gone that he can't lift the covers and slide in without waking her - at least if he wanted to, but this time he doesn't want to.

"Hey, babe," he whispers against the back of her ear, stroking her white hair away to kiss her there.

Tilde wrinkles her nose, half-smiling, and he remembers the year in London they'd spent in their youth pretending desperately that this was a life they could have and not a ludicrous fantasy. It turned out alright, all things considered - a compromise, frustrating and often painful, but the number of good times between then and now couldn't be measured with all the grains of sand on all the beaches in all the world.

"You're late," she says at last, scratchy with sleep and yawning against his shoulder.

"Gimme a break, I'm fucking sixty-seven years old. Takes me a bit longer to navigate them stairs these days."

"You could come in the front door instead and use the elevator." One of her hands comes to rest on Eggsy's stomach, stroking lightly at the place where there used to be toned muscles, her fingertips slowly tracing the line of hair downward to the waistband of his underwear.

"I could," he agrees. "I mean, what else am I meant to do now I'm retired? Potter about the garden in my slippers?"

"Harry and Hamish seem quite happy doing that."

"Yeah, well, as far as I know Harry and Hamish never promised they was gonna come and marry the prettiest girl in the world once the world stopped needing saving every five minutes."

" _Girl_ ," Tilde scoffs, laughing. Seventy-five suits her and she knows it - not from the way he looks at her with more awe and longing with every year that passes, but the way she feels, the way she wears her decades of experience with as much poise as the gowns and jewels she's draped with in her royal portraits. "I'd better get divorced, then."

Somewhere in the palace, King Filip is sleeping like this with his secretary, Leo. Scattered around the city and the world are Tilde's children and grandchildren, some dark and thin like Filip, some with mysteriously blue-green eyes and G.I. Joe jawlines, all just as brilliant as their mother and all completely beloved by four besotted parents.

"No rush," Eggsy murmurs into Tilde's hair, kissing his favourite freckle on her neck. "We got all the time in the world."


End file.
